The Blog

June 2006 Newsletter

Posted on July 01, 2006 at 1:05 PM

Music Festivals

This years Summer music festival line-up in the Yukon is a little different. We were worried, for a while, that there were going to be fewer of them for us to be involved in this year. Well, there are a few festivals not happening this year, but there are new offerings as well. Farrago is taking a year off to give the volunteers a well deserved rest and the Watson Lake music festival didn’t happen this year, those are the ones we were unfortunate to lose. The Alsek music festival and the Kluane Mountain Bluegrass festival are coming up this weekend and the schedule of events looks better than ever. Two festivals to enjoy on the same weekend. At the Alsek, Music starts on Friday night and goes to Sunday afternoon with up to 3 stages playing and all this on top of the craft and food booths. At the KMBF there’s going to be four days of bluegrass/old-time, and honky tonk music to enjoy. The Atlin Arts & Music Festival is happening on the weekend of July 7th. Music, Comedy, Atlin Artists Exhibition, Storytelling, Film, Arts & Crafts Fair, Slide Shows, Music & Art Workshops, Free Camping, Kid’s Activities, & Lots of Jamming in the Street! These are great music festivals, but can these alone satisfy the Yukon’s hunger for live music in the great outdoors? Added to this summer’s line-up of festivals is Sunstroke, a Frostbite Music Festival and Triple JJJ music production happening on the Friday of the Solstice weekend. This event is going to feature 17 acts over 12 hours in Shipyards Park here in Whitehorse. The great selection of local acts includes + Standard Deviation, Friend Called Five, Drifting, Scotch, Gordie Tentrees Band, Fullers Earth, Raw Element, Death in Venice, Crash the Car, Heather Loewen and the Daily Special, Kate Weekes, DJ Nemo and Nemesis and the headlining acts are NOMEANSNO from Vancouver, SUMMER OF ‘92 from Toronto and Rae Spoon and Ivan Coyote from Vancouver.

Same look, new taste!

We changed things up a little bit, but it isn’t something you will notice on the shelf, it’s something you will notice in the bottle, can or keg. We’ve been hearing that our Chilkoot Lager was good, but… and there were a lot of different endings to that “but…” including “sweet” or “full flavoured” or"… an aftertaste” All of these different “but…"s pointed in the same direction. We had created a lager that wasn’t the light crisp Canadian style lager we were aiming for, but more a Full bodied European lager. A good beer to be sure, if that was what you were looking for. Our problem was that we use barley for our beer and don’t use cereals like corn and rice. That is what most of the Canadian lagers are made with and that wasn’t something we were willing to compromise on (not even in the cynical and jaded “Marketing Department"). The answer to our problem came in the form of a new malted barley specifically developed for lager beers. After some trial recipes we found the mark. The Chilkoot you find on the shelves now should be the new recipe, and we encourage you to let us know what you think of the change. You can stop by the brewery to let us know, send us an e-mail, or just tell your bartender, we talk to those guys a lot. Now, you may be asking how you are going to be able to tell the difference between the 2 until after you have already bought your beer. Well, there is a way to tell. If you’ve …

… ever noticed the little white pricing gun sticker on our boxes and trays and wondered what they are for, we’ll let you in on a little bit of the secret here and how it can help you determine if the Chilkoot you are drinking is the new “Canadian style lager” or the older “European style” flavour.  This little sticker gives us the date the beer was packaged and the batch that went into the bottle or can.  The last 3 digits are the ones we are going to concern ourselves with.  These are the batch numbers, and changed the recipe for the lager at about batch 1000.  This means that any package marked 9, something, something (996,997,998) are all going to be the older recipe.  If it is labelled 0, something, something (005, 006, 007) it is from the new recipe.  Kegs are labelled a little bit differently, so if you have any questions about your draft, call either Darcy or Mark at the brewery and we can help you out.

Look what you CAN do!

We’ve seen and heard a fair number of creative uses for beer cans around here, and we have had some creative uses dropped off for us here. If you’ve been into the brewery you may have seen our beer can hats. These hats were made by Ken, who drops in every few months or so bring us his latest creation and pick up the supplies required to create another one. We have a few created for the Chilkoot Lager and at least one Yukon Gold creation, but no hat yet with the Chilkoot Light can. The latest creation was given to us by Dave. This unit pictured here is a camp stove. You can see it has been used, so it works. For how long, or how well, mor how safely we can’t be sure. We haven’t had the opportunity to test it ourselves (our legal consultation tells us to recommend not trying this at home). We know…

… there are more than just these 2 examples of our cans being more than just recycled.  Have you got an interesting beer can creation?  We would love to see it.  Creations can be shown off in person at the brewery, by sending us the item or picture in the mail, or e-mailing us a pic.  We’ll include the best of the submissions in future editions of the newsletter.

How far are we getting?

One of the most exciting new developments is in Alberta in the form of our newest account for draft. Actually it is our newest 5 accounts for draft, all of them coming from the Original Joes chain of restaurants. To quote straight from their website, Original Joes is “a place where satisfying meals are delivered at prices that make everyone smile. Pull up a chair and sip a cold pint of micro-brewed beer while you enjoy conversations with good friends. Original Joe’s is everyone’s place where one can truly say life’s pleasures really are quite simple.” We couldn’t agree more with that. Since we first started to sell bell into Alberta, we have had our eyes on the Original Joes restaurants. Walking into their bars and seeing the big Gold handle of Yukon Gold on the bar is definitely satisfying and not only to us it would seem. Draft beer continues to move steadily through the bar.

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